


when and where our eyes meet

by luninosity



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs From Steve Rogers Can Help, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Healing, Implied Sexual Content, Love, M/M, Oral Sex, Past Brainwashing, Past Rape/Non-con, Porn with Feelings, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Standard Hydra-Related Warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:29:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4960708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky, still relearning physical cues, consequently falls asleep anywhere and everywhere, without warning, when his body finally hits even its impressive limits and shuts down <i>hard. </i></p><p>Steve puts blankets over Bucky’s shoulders and feels his heart crack in two with the force of his own love and the knowledge of his powerlessness. Every time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when and where our eyes meet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foreverhermit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverhermit/gifts).



> Title courtesy of the song "Put Your Money On Me," by The Struts, which I've been wanting to use for a while! 
> 
> Fic inspired by [this lovely little art plus headcanon by whothebuckisfucky on tumblr](http://whothebuckisfucky.tumblr.com/post/104564201440).

Steve knows Bucky’s healing.   
  
Steve knows healing’s a process.   
  
Steve knows, because he’s got a lot of shattered pieces himself: they jumble up and scrape together and twist and catch in his guts, sometimes for very obvious reasons, sometimes for no discernable reason at all. Sometimes he looks at Bucky’s pale face in the aftermath of a nightmare and he wants to scream or cry or put his fist through a wall or kiss colorless lips until Bucky remembers how to smile. Memory doesn’t work like that.   
  
Bucky’s healing. Steve _knows_ that.   
  
Bucky pushes himself. Bucky these days is unused to many physical cues that a lot of people take for granted: sensations of hunger, of a full bladder, of the need to cry, of the need to yawn, of the need for sleep. Hydra’d trained him to ignore distractions and had restructured neural pathways when training’d proven insufficient.   
  
The not-yawning part is oddly among the most unnerving. Yawns’re contagious for most other people. Not Bucky. Bucky also, as far as Steve can tell, doesn’t sneeze.   
  
Bucky, when Tony Stark’d said, “what are you, half robot? No, don’t answer that, just help me clean up the sneezing powder I sort of accidentally invented and then accidentally got all over the lab, and anyway some of my best friends’re robots, I mean that, not a joke,” had paused for the span of two seconds and then retorted, flawlessly deadpan, “Come with me if you want to live.”   
  
Tony’d fallen out of his chair laughing. Steve, who _has_ seen at least the first two Terminator movies, thank you very much, had said, “No fate but what we make?” and Bucky’d smiled at him, at first, then had flinched ever so slightly, as if at a memory or a shadow or a dream; and had stopped talking for the rest of the day. No sneezing, either, despite Tony’s dismaying eruptions of science.   
  
Bucky’s healing and has made pretty damn enormous steps already. Recognizing the gnawing pangs as hunger. Recognizing the need to relieve himself. Recognizing that the wetness falling from his eyes, after those certain dreams, means tears and release.   
  
Bucky _does_ push himself, grim-faced therapy physical and emotional, and all those sensations have to be pretty pronounced before he’ll admit to them. He wants to be functional for as long as possible. Steve knows this. Bucky’s said so. Being honest about wants.   
  
Bucky, consequently, falls asleep anywhere and everywhere, without warning, when his body finally hits even its impressive limits and shuts down _hard_.   
  
Steve’s found him on the sofa. In the hallway. Once on the kitchen floor. A few times next to his bed: half on, maybe, like he tried but couldn’t make it.   
  
Sam and the SHIELD doctors all agree that this isn’t bad compared to _other_ possible side effects. Steve knows they’re right.    
  
Steve puts blankets over Bucky’s shoulders and feels his heart crack in two with the force of his own love and the knowledge of his powerlessness. Every time.   
  
The fourteenth time, it’s one of those nearly-on-the-bed nights; Bucky, though yet not anyplace _near_ field-cleared, had decided that Steve and Thor needed backup when dealing with a giant berserk cyborg who’d taken offense to depictions of robots at the San Diego Comic-Con. Bucky’d snuck out of the Tower, ditched his security detail in Chicago, and appeared like obsidian smoke across a torn-up parking lot in California. He’d spotted the behemoth’s weak spot when Steve and Thor’d been too preoccupied dodging laser blasts and rescuing civilians, and had calmly coolly run up its back and stuck a knife into circuitry.   
  
The weak spot’d been near a shoulder joint. Left arm. Cybernetic left arm.   
  
Bucky’d vanished after. Not immediately after: he’d stayed long enough to launch himself dramatically off a frozen metal cyborg shoulder—the whole body’d turned into a delightful motionless sculpture centerpiece for the convention—and to catch Steve’s eyes across rubble and dust: neither of them harmed, okay, see you at home—   
  
And then he’d gone.    
  
And now Steve’s home too, grimy from battle, flushed with success at zero loss of life, preoccupied with concern for and pride in Bucky’s ability to show up and save the day, to save Steve, over and over and always.    
  
He looks at the man he loves, who’s not managed to make it onto his bed—not even half, upper body kind of awkwardly collapsed across mattress-support. Utterly asleep, utterly exhausted. Hair in his face. Oh, Bucky.    
  
He stumbles into his own bedroom. They don’t share a room. He’d wanted to give Bucky space; Bucky’s never asked for anything different. If they wake each other up with nightmares, they’ll slide into the same bed and hold on until morning, but they don’t talk about it after. Steve wishes they would—   
  
No. He wishes they _could_. He shoves his own wants down with vicious self-loathing awareness. Bucky’s been through enough. No asking for more. No asking for a hand to hold in the dark, no asking for Bucky to talk or explain why he doesn’t stay. No asking for a kiss, a single soft sweet brush of lips that’d mean Bucky maybe remembers other kisses, remembers what they were, remembers how to want here and now where they are.   
  
Bucky, Steve’s perfectly aware, might have sharp-fanged fragmentary memories of—unwanted kisses. Not only kisses. More. Much.   
  
He grabs his own blanket, a big luxurious cloud that they’d’ve never been able to afford even dreaming about once upon a time. It’s a compromise. He’s been coming to terms, gradually, with Tony’s idea of a bed.    
  
He comes back to Bucky’s spare spartan clean-walled room, and he tucks the blanket around Bucky’s slumped shoulders, and he wishes Bucky had some artwork on the walls; he wishes he could drop a kiss on messy dark hair, the top of Bucky’s head; he wishes.   
  
He says, “I love you, Buck,” and staggers back to the shower under the weight of the world. He scrubs until building-dust and cyborg-grease and weariness lift a little, buoyed by heat and steam and the quiet lavender-sage scent of the body wash Bucky seems to like.    
  
He can’t wake Bucky when the exhaustion’s this deep, but he did find a blanket. He can keep Bucky warm. He can love Bucky, who once brought him blankets and soup and medicine, who sat by him through pneumonia winters and summer chest-colds, who today had met his eyes across a battlefield. That’s something, and he’s doing it: he’s loving Bucky with all his heart, and if that comes with day-long silences and non-use of beds and the occasional muffled scream, well. The passing-out-next-to-the-bed one is kind of adorable, though adorable isn’t really the word.    
  
Bucky exhausted himself saving Steve. Steve’s heart melts into helpless painful fondness, under the drumming of water-drops across his shoulders.   
  
He steps out of the shower and loses his balance and nearly lands on his Captain America ass, because: Bucky. Right _there_.   
  
Bucky’s stayed wrapped up in Steve’s comforter, looking soft and hazy, looking warm and cuddly despite the weaponry he’s almost certainly got under there; his hair’s standing up in whimsical sleep-styled loops, and he’s got a shoulder propped on the doorframe. Both he and the door are watching Steve. With curiosity, with dawning comprehension, like he’s just picked up a puzzle piece with an obvious home.   
  
“Bucky,” Steve says blankly, lamely, unsure whether to grab a towel or remain perfectly immobile and non-threatening. His body’s got a third idea. Bucky’s looking at him naked; looking him up and down.   
  
No. Bucky seems more curious than anything. Not the time for that; and further consideration of this reaction dwindles his half-erection even more. If Bucky’s curious about Steve’s physical responses, if Bucky’s had to painstakingly relearn his own body’s cues, does Bucky even know what an erection is? Does he recognize desire? Would that mean Hydra _hadn’t_ used him for—but they had, Steve knows they had, he’s nearly vomited over those files. But was Bucky awake and aware enough to comprehend the act?   
  
“Steve.” Bucky shifts under the blanket, still leaning on the doorframe. The comforter’s white and blue; his eyes stand out even more brightly against it. He’s breathtaking: gaze like pale winter oceans, rumpled dark hair, endless legs, taut muscle, glorious lips quirked in something that could be a smile. He’s barefoot, Steve notices dimly. No boots or socks. Visible ankles.   
  
“Steve,” he says again. “You…this…this is yours.”   
  
“…yeah?”   
  
Bucky touches the edge of the blanket. Metal fingers. Feather-light. “It feels warm.”   
  
“Yeah.” Steve, dripping, wonders whether he should ask for a towel; they’re closer to Bucky. He doesn’t ask. “Are you…is everything…are you okay?”   
  
“I’m warm.” Bucky looks at his hand on the comforter, looks at Steve. “Because of you.”   
  
“Bucky,” Steve whispers.   
  
“My bed’s too soft,” Bucky says. “I can’t—I don’t feel right.”   
  
“I know,” Steve agrees. A nod. Careful. “Tony doesn’t understand about beds. He understands about nightmares. But he wants to have them in comfort, he says.”   
  
“Yours is harder.”   
  
“I bought a harder mattress,” Steve admits. Bucky knows this from shared post-nightmare nights, of course. “Still kinda not right, but better. But—” But that’s not the problem. But the problem is it feels empty when you’re not there, like a hole beside me in the mattress, like a hole that goes down through the center of the goddamn earth.   
  
“But,” Bucky says. “Not right.”   
  
Steve nods again. Drips more water on the bathmat. The bathmat doesn’t complain. “Um…Buck? Is there anything I can, um, do? For you?”   
  
Bucky grins at him, sudden and brilliant. “Yeah. I like being warm.”   
  
“That’s…good, that’s great, we can do that.” Lost in the radiance, in the fact that it exists. Bucky likes something. “So you want to keep the blanket?”   
  
“No.”   
  
“Okay…”   
  
“I might like your bed better,” Bucky says, tone someplace between cheerfully unsubtle nineteen-thirties flirtation and wry self-awareness of the performance. “If it’s harder. If it’s warmer. If you’re in it. You know it’s for you, yeah?”   
  
“…what is?”   
  
A shrug: “Me. The pushing. Well, some of it. Not all. ’m trying to be okay. For you.”   
  
“You are,” Steve breathes, Steve vows, taking a step forward. His bones hurt with the need to hold all that pale-eyed courage. “You always are. And you don’t have to—not for me, not if it’s—that’s why you—wait, you _know_ you’re pushing yourself too—”   
  
“I know more than you think I do. For one…” Bucky’s eyes flit up and down Steve’s wet body again. “…I know what your dick looks like when you want me, Stevie.”   
  
“Of all the memories you could get back,” Steve says, heat prickling behind his eyes, heat like grief or relief and he’s not sure yet which, “and just ’cause you know _mine_ —”   
  
“Someone’s gotta save you from cyborgs and self-martyrdom,” Bucky sighs grandly, and drops Steve’s comforter off his shoulders.   
  
He’s not just barefoot.   
  
He’s bare…everything. Muscles and scars. Silver and strength under bathroom lights.   
  
Steve can hardly breathe. Steve’s body no longer has this problem, and leaps to attention. The air hangs hot with steam.    
  
Bucky says, “I know what I’m doing.”   
  
Bucky says, “I don’t know how well it’s gonna work, mine, I mean, I kinda—they didn’t want me distracted, they wanted me functional, I could if—if the order was to—I’m not sure I can without orders but I think I _can_ , anyway, if you tell me to, I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, no fate but what we make and all, and would you stop looking at me like that, Jesus, Steve, I’m sayin’ I _want_ you to tell me to.”   
  
Bucky says, “I know what I’m doing and you put blankets on me when I fall asleep and I want you.”   
  
Steve splutters, stunned, “You were naked under there _the whole time?_ You—I was tryin’ to figure out how to explain erections to you, Bucky Barnes, you goddamn _asshole_ —”   
  
And Bucky starts laughing. Steps closer, both of them naked now. Bucky’s not hard but his cock’s beautiful regardless: thick and heavy in the space between powerful thighs. “Yeah, but you love me.”   
  
Steve steps forward too. Wraps himself around Bucky, breathes Bucky in, feels Bucky wrap himself around Steve too: bodies pressed together, entwined, heartbeat to heartbeat. Bucky’s hair tickles Steve’s nose; Steve buries his face in Bucky’s neck and breathes, just breathes.   
  
“You smell like me,” Bucky notes, nuzzling. “You used my shampoo.”   
  
“I love you.”   
  
“I want to sleep in your bed.”   
  
“So that’s how this’s gonna go? You decide you want things, you want my bed, you want to break out of SHIELD custody to fight giant cyborgs, and that’s how it is? Wow, Buck, you _are_ an asshole.”   
  
“Yep. That work for you?”   
  
“Totally,” Steve says, “completely, hell yes,” and kisses his ear because that’s the closest spot he can reach. A first kiss. Perfection. “Hey, you said I could give your dick orders. Wanna try?”   
  
“Classy,” Bucky says back, sliding a shower-warmed metal hand down to pinch Steve’s ass very very lightly, “where’re my kid gloves, Steve, I’m a brainwashed deadly former assassin, I deserve better pickup lines. I want to sleep _with_ you in your bed. I love you. That’s the first time I’ve said that since—too damn long.”   
  
“I love that you said it,” Steve says, serious as a pulse-beat, sure as the warmth of water and the blue of eyes meeting his, certain as every emptiness filling in. “I love that you said it to me naked in a bathroom, really, Buck, come on, a bathroom—? _Yes_ I love you, yes I want you in my bed, did you think I didn’t, I always did, I always _have_ , I _always_ — Hey, what happens if I say I want to suck you off?”   
  
Bucky drops his head to thump against Steve’s shoulder, but he’s laughing. “That’s not an order, Steve.”   
  
“Okay,” Steve says, running a hand through Bucky’s hair, which gets Bucky to look up, which means Steve gets to kiss him properly on the lips, breathless and glowing, “hold still, you’re gonna stand right here and I’m gonna get on my knees and suck you off and I want you to come, if you can, I want to taste you, that _is_ an order, understand, you’re gonna be good and follow that order and come for me?”   
  
“Christ, Stevie,” Bucky mutters, eyes and mouth a little wide, a little dazed, astonished, flushed and lovely. His cock, when Steve sneaks a hand down there, stirs: not yet hard, but on the way: filling and fattening, held in Steve’s grip and by Steve’s command.   
  
“So that works,” Steve agrees, and drops to his knees right there on the happy bathmat, the scents of Bucky’s lavender-sage bath products drifting around like portrait-frames, the blue-and-white comforter smirking in a heap at Bucky’s feet; and as he moves, as he looks up, he hears Bucky whisper, “This _works_ , Steve,” and he smiles.


End file.
